Defense

JEDI spending included in DOD funding bill

• By Lauren C. Williams
• Dec 18, 2019

The Defense Department is one step closer to getting out from under a continuing resolution.

The House voted 231-192 to pass the national security appropriations minibus bill Dec. 17 that doles out $738 billion in overall funding. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill before Dec. 20, when the current continuing resolution funding expires.

Lawmakers focused on cloud priorities in joint explanatory statements accompanying the legislation.

Members noted that DOD CIO Dana Deasy complied with a previous appropriations requirement seeking a written report on Pentagon’s plans for a multicloud environment. That means that DOD can begin obligating and spending money to move data and applications to the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud.

The document also nudged DOD to wrap up its cloud migration efforts for Fourth Estate agencies by the end of fiscal 2020. The Defense Information Systems Agency is leading the MilCloud migration as well as the Fourth Estate IT consolidation efforts with the DOD chief information office.

The services came up short on funding of some IT development efforts. For example, the Navy will get a little less than its request for $268.5 million due to electronic procurement system contract award delays, excess growth, execution delays and unjustified requests.

However, the NAVSEA Readiness and Logistics IT digital transformation plan got an $8 million bump. The Navy will also receive $209.2 million to fully fund two large unmanned surface vessels in 2020.

The Army’s tactical network modernization in service will get $443.4 million for armored brigade combat teams and satellite communications. Army IT development dropped $37.8 million from its budget request to $88.7 million due to historical under-execution, unjustified growth and a contract delay.